Make of us a garland.

Rilke:

We are not poor. We are just without riches,

we who have no will no world:

marked with the marks of the latest anxiety, disfigured, stripped of leaves.

Around us swirls the dust of the cities,

the garbage clings to us.

We are shunned as if contaminated,

thrown away like broken pots, like bones,

like last year’s calendar.

And yet if our Earth needed to

she could weave us together like roses

and make of us a garland.

For each being is cleaner than washed stones

and endlessly yours, and like an animal

who knows already in its first blind moments

its need for one thing only…

to let ourselves be poor like that…as we truly are.

-The Book of Hours III,16

“…a discovery that respects the hiddenness and in communicability of each one’s personal secret, while paying tribute to his presence in the common celebration.”

-Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration